1965 Belvedere I Sedan

[BigFlo]

Finished another cold weather project recently. My original steering wheel was not in horrible shape, but had the cracks that most wheels have. Seeing the prices for restorations and buying restored wheels, I decided that I would give it a try. If I royally screwed it up, I could always resort to sending it out. Here is the original condition.

 

[BigFlo]

After looking up some online restorations I followed their lead - I enlarged the cracks to get the epoxy where I needed it, using a cutoff wheel, dremel tool and files. I filled the cracks with PC7 two part epoxy. It took overnight for that stuff to dry but it sanded pretty easily.

 

[BigFlo]

I found that I needed to make some small touch-ups after I sanded, so I used some glazing putty, rather than using the epoxy. The epoxy is real difficult to control and not get everywhere.

 

[BigFlo]

I sprayed the color with rattle can and topped it with clear. I'm happy with the results.

 

[Snook]

Looks good!

Chuck (snook)

 

[66Satellite47]

Great thread. I became a true Mopar guy in about '66-67. A young down the street had '65 Satellite 383 4 spd. Beautiful car, even though not a post car.

 

[BigFlo]

Finally got some nice weather, loaded her up and took her to the paint booth. For my first paint job, I'm happy with how it turned out. A few pics below of after the color coats and then after the clear coats. Got a few sags in the clear that need to be sanded/buffed, but she's not a show car.

 

[Jerry Hall]

Looking good. I don't care, even the best painter is subject to get a run or two.

 

[66Satellite47]

Got a winner there.

 

[barbee6043]

Nice work!!!! Make her solid, safe, and drive her!!!

 

[BigFlo]

Haven’t posted in a while but things are progressing. I wet sanded and buffed the paint.
Got the motor rebuilt. Married the trans to motor and positioned it to cut the floor pan for the shifter.
Started adding sound and heat barrier.

 

[khryslerkid]

And it looks like you're doing most of this out in your driveway?

Looking real nice

My favorite B body.

 

[BigFlo]

Was able to strip the seats and rebuild/recover them. The seat covers are from Legendary. I went through 685 hog rings! Old original vs new pictures;
Rear seat top and bottom:
Front seat top and bottom

 

[BigFlo]

And it looks like you're doing most of this out in your driveway?

Looking real nice

My favorite B body.

Thanks. The only thing I’m not doing in my driveway is the motor handling. I had the rebuilt motor delivered to a friends shop and trailered the car there. We mounted the motor to the k-frame and assembled the front suspension at the same time. The motor is temporarily mounted right now. Plan to bring the car back to the shop, drop the motor, assemble the clutch, flywheel, trans and headers, etc and remount everything.

 

[ct71rr]

This is coming along nicely. The color is great. Any more pics of your door lifter? I’m looking at building one also.

 

[BigFlo]

This is coming along nicely. The color is great. Any more pics of your door lifter? I’m looking at building one also.
View attachment 1379866

This was all scrap wood I had laying around. I used a 2x6 and drilled 4 holes through the saddle and the 2x6. I recessed the machine screws into the 2x6 so they were below the surface. The arms are something like a 2x3 that I cut at an angle so they would rest against the edge of the 2x6 and screwed them to the 2x6.
I cut two pieces of the 2x3 to fit Between the 2x3 arms on each end and wrapped them in foam packaging material and screwed them to the 2x6. That is the cushion for the bottom edge of the door.
I found I needed a block of wood under the bottom of the door to raise it high enough to get into position. I just used a loose piece of 4x4 I had.
I used a blanket to cushion the door against the arm. This was for a one time use and worked fine. I was concerned about the arms being able to hold the door, but I found there was not a lot of force applied to the arms since the door is mostly vertical. The saddle was free to rotate so I could position the door pretty well.

 

[ct71rr]

Thank you for posting this!

 

[BigFlo]

Got my replacement dash bezel from PG Industries recently. Original vs new pic below. The new bezel does not come with the lens - my original lens was in good shape so I transferred it to the new bezel. What I didn’t know was that I also had to transfer the green lenses for the blinkers because the new bezel did not have those either.

 

[BigFlo]

Benchtested my instrument panel lighting with blue LEDs.

 

[BigFlo]

Original door panels were the tan/dark grey combo. After cleaning and prepping the hell out of them, they got new colors using paint from KolorKorrect that matches the seats.